AMMAN —
MP Saleh Al-Armouti warned Saturday of increasing public debt, which, according
to recent figures, now stands at 110 percent of the GDP (by last May),
according to Jo24.
اضافة اعلان
Armouti wondered
why the public debt has been rising steadily, despite the inflow of grants,
foreign aid and loans that the government keeps talking about, asking: “Why has
public debt reached $40 billion, despite the fact that taxes collected by the
government from citizens make up 70 percent of the state’s general budget?” he
asked.
Armouti said that
the government does not reveal the value of interest rates on loans that Jordan
takes from international bodies. He alleged that the government does not use
grants that come for specific projects, giving as example the building of two
schools from a JD6 million grant from the Kuwait Fund.
The Islamist
deputy called on the government to make its loan-repayment plan public, and
expressed concern about the possibility of having to resort to further borrowing
just to service the mounting public debt.
“We need an
economic team to tackle the steady increase in public debt so that these debts
do not influence the sovereign decisions and policies of the state,” Armouti
added.
He called for holding a
national conference in which the public and private sectors participate, so
that the government may come up with solutions to pay off its debt to the
private sector, since the government alleges that it has no financial
allocations, even though the law does not allow the execution of tenders unless
funds have been allocated for them.
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